Hard drive Crash - And It's benefits

6 replies
!st,
it has been the day from Hell. MS's updates didn't sit well with one of my computers. (the other 4 updated fine) It went into perpetual reboot mode. Ughh.

The good part? I have two hard drives on all my computers. So even though I will have to reinstall all the programs on it (except the ones I stopped using) The only info I lost was in a couple of emails (I was able to get most of the contacts and 99.9% of the emails, but there was only one I really wanted and that person resent it to me today.

(the second part is my main email and one of the puters I use the most don't seem to get along well. So an hour or two one the phone with them, and they still are clueless as to why it doesn't work consistently) (GoDaddy...I know, 'I told you so') (am looking into a DS at The Planet or hosting at hostgator... haven't decided which yet.)

Anyway, what is good is other than a stressful day, when I am done, I will have lost nothing due to keeping docs on a different hard drive than programs. I can not stress enough the advantages of doing that, it has saved recent un-backed up docs a couple of times now in the last 10 years.

So... If anyone has an opinion on DSs from the Planet (they have support at least unlike most DSs) or hosting at hostgator or any other REALLY good host, I am open to comments. Meanwhile look into adding a second HD to use for docs if you don't already.


Mark
#benefits #crash #drive #hard
  • Profile picture of the author digigo
    do a search on RAID1 mirror external hard drive enclosure.. it will back up your data in real time... and you will never lose a thing.. that is how data center does it..
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    • Profile picture of the author Andy Money
      Originally Posted by digigo View Post

      do a search on RAID1 mirror external hard drive enclosure.. it will back up your data in real time... and you will never lose a thing.. that is how data center does it..
      Do that AND get a remote backup service like Carbonite.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tina Golden
        I'm going to get a second external hard drive to do that. Hopefully, I can set it to do so automatically.

        My computer just had a meltdown and most of my files were backed up but I forgot to back up my work folder and lost several days work. My own fault, too, because I had been saving it to an online backup called Dropbox and I forgot to put it back that fateful night.

        But everything else I had was backed up so I'm not out any products or other files.

        Tina
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        • Profile picture of the author xiaophil
          Calling a windows update problem a "Hard drive crash" is a bit melodramatic don't you think?

          Nothing has been lost has it? You are free to copy your files over on another machine.

          Also, just for the record, RAID itself is *not* a backup mechanism, it just protects your *currently active* file system from disk failure. Files can still be replaced or deleted or screwed up by viruses with no hope of recovery.

          Occasionally dumping a copy of your files or partition image to an external drive is effectively the same thing (a RAID mirror).

          Taking Incremental backups allows you to restore files from different points in the past, like before that virus started messing with them for example.

          Phil
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          • Profile picture of the author DogScout
            Originally Posted by xiaophil View Post

            Calling a windows update problem a "Hard drive crash" is a bit melodramatic don't you think?

            Nothing has been lost has it? You are free to copy your files over on another machine.
            Phil
            Oh boy, it crashed and no I was not free to copy anything anywhere. The only saving grace was having a seprate docs HD. If a complete loss of everything on a HD isn't a crash, not sure what is, unless the HD has to be unusable afterward to qualify for that word?
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  • Profile picture of the author Loren Woirhaye
    My system is a little haphazard, but I try regularly backup all
    my original docs and ebooks on at least 2 hard drives.

    Programs can be re-got, but original writings, and to some
    extent, ebooks, can be tough to recover. Videos I seldom
    worry to much about as I have them uploaded in finished
    format to various servers. Websites are backed-up, usually
    once - the chances of me losing my hard drive and the sites
    on my hosting at the same time are remote.

    I also ocassionally upload original docs to one or more hosting
    accounts just to be safe.

    As I said, it's haphazard, but it works so far.
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